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Comment by otterley | Hacker News Reader

The Supreme Court isn't warning anyone of anything. The only opinion in here belongs to Justice Thomas and Justice Thomas alone. And it has as much legal significance as his solo dissents in actual cases -- which is to say, practically none whatsoever.

Flagging for title change.

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For whatever it's worth, I disagree. There's a dominant belief floating around that social media corporations are free to mass-manipulate, enjoying indemnity from the misdeeds of their users while restricting any user-generated content that disrupts their commercial or political narratives.

In reality this belief has not been tested by the U.S. Supreme Court, and now a representative from that very court is pre-emptively deconstructing all the prior legal basis for that belief existing. If this doesn't serve as a warning shot I'm not sure what does.

In my view, that balance is for Congress to decide (subject to the First Amendment), not the Court - and I'm frankly surprised that Justice Thomas -- a self-described "textualist" -- isn't giving more deference to social media's right not to republish views with which it disagrees.

In his opinion Justice Thomas explains why the law, as written by Congress, does not provide the degree of broad legal immunity that people think it does. He explains how past rulings in lower courts are interpretations of the "spirit" of the law, not the letter of the law. In that sense he is completely deferring to Congress.

No, Thomas is arguing that all of the cases he's cited were wrongly decided, even though many of those cases take textualist approaches to section 230.

In fact, his argument boils down to: these websites in these cited cases did things I consider immoral, so the fact that section 230 explicitly protects the providers in these institutes is wrong because these companies were somehow actually the publishers of the content on their website. Thomas never once supports his claim that the websites became publishers in any of the cases he cites.

In fact, Thomas is attempting to rewrite section 230, by trying to limit provider protections to just the safe harbor provided in section 230(c)(2).

He's expounding on why he agrees it was appropriate for the Court to deny the petition for writ of certiorari. Unlike for an opinion, they need not provide their reasoning in part or in full (or indicate concurrence) for their vote, however they may.

"I agree with the Court’s decision not to take up this case. I write to explain why, in an appropriate case, we should consider whether the text of this increasingly important statute aligns with the current state of immunity enjoyed by Internet platforms." (pg. 13)

IANL but even single opinions by Supreme Court justices are often cited in other cases, and arguments. It’s a lot more than you think, but perhaps someone who is an actual lawyer can weigh in?

IAAL. Sure, they are cited, but their influential power is pretty weak at best.

Imagine you're a judge. If you come to a legal conclusion that directly contradicts a Supreme Court holding by quoting a dissent attached to the opinion instead of the Court's opinion, you're at grave risk of committing legal error and having your decision reversed by a higher court. So no judge in his/her right mind is going to do that.

If that were the case, that "you're at grave risk of committing legal error and having your decision reversed by a higher court" how would any decision be revisited or changed? It would follow that just becasue it's in a dissenting opinion does not mean it's the wrong decision. Stare decisis seems to only exist in textbooks.

Just to add some points to this, Minersville School District v. Gobitis was overturned in favor of the dissenting opinion in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette. Certainly the dissents in Plessy, Dred Scott, and Olmstead to name a few where the dissenting opinion later became the majority. Was it not an attorney that argued those points? They may have risked legal error, but that didn't negate that the argument was correct in the dissent.

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